Hello everyone,
Due to being on prac, I am a little behind on the past couple of learning paths as well as blog posts. A little background on my prac to set the scene before I write posts about my prac experiences – I have just completed my first week of a three week block teaching in grade one. My school is a P-7 state school located in south east Brisbane in the Redlands bayside area and follows the Australian Curriculum. My mentor happened to teach me when I was in primary school so it is safe to say she is loaded with experience and I am fortunate enough to have built a fantastic professional relationship with her over the past week.
In the grade one classroom I am in, ICT is incorporated to enhance learning in many ways. Students have access to six standalone computers, six Ipads (a variety of different sizes and each filled in educational apps categorised into every subject – ‘Literacy’, ‘Numeracy’, ‘Geography’, ‘History’ and a folder called ‘Creating’ which contains apps for transforming learning by using ICT to create projects etc.) and an interactive whiteboard. The teacher has a laptop that is connected to the interactive whiteboard which is used daily to enhance student learning. Something I really like about my mentor is that she not only uses ICT for learning but encourages students to USE the ICT as part of their learning. I have so much I could share about how ICT is used which I’m really excited about, but in this post I will only mention a couple of main things. The teacher uses a website called Class Dojo to communicate with parents, send information and take home letters to parents, remind parents of school events, discuss specific student needs and manage students behaviour. Each student has a little monster as a character and the character is used to collect each students’ ‘bee stings’ which is part of a whole school behaviour management plan. The whole class can receive a bee sting and the individual as well as the group bee stings are calculated and there are prizes for reaching a certain amount.
I will expand on ICT use in more blog posts to come but I want to highlight the program my mentor uses daily that not only enhances student learning through ICT but gives students the opportunity to learn using ICTs. Every interactive whiteboard in the school has this program installed which is from Promethean Planet and the program is called ActivInspire. I was able to download the program on my laptop which allows me to create flipcharts for my lessons and put them on a USB to plug into my mentors laptop and access easily. I HIGHLY recommend downloading this program which you can do here because you also have access to a whole heap of FREE resources (flipchart templates, resources etc.) that are divided into subjects. This has saved me SO MUCH TIME. This Promethean Planet website also has a section called ‘Blogs and Forums’ where you can network with other teachers to discuss creative ways of using the program on your interactive whiteboard as well as share resources and ideas. I have quickly had a browse at some of my peers blogs and Tahnee’s has highlighted that week 11 of our learning path discusses interactive whiteboards and she has also suggested some programs that I definitely want to further look into. ARGH too many things to do!
Till my next post,
Skye
skyeclarkson 